UVU Art
For this month’s column on Higher Ed, I headed to Orem to visit with the people of Utah Valley University. The changeover from UVSC to UVU has had a major impact on the art department as well as the rest of the campus. UVU has some fresh […]
Navigating a Narrow Passage: Jenevieve Hubbard at Charley Hafen
by Lane Bachman My first impression of Jenevieve Hubbard’s series Narrow Passage is that it seemed to have taken a tedious amount of time to execute each piece. The tedium is always thwarted, however, by the artist considering the act of process as being an integral part of the work. Narrow Passage, unveiled […]
A Completely New Entity in the World: Colour Maisch and Sandy Brunvand at Finch Lane Gallery
To the Greeks, character was fate. More than accident, and certainly more than willpower, his inborn pattern of action and response determined how a man’s life turned out. The equivalent influence in an art gallery is architecture. At the A Gallery, for example, a featured artist can […]
Places Within, Places Without: Mirror Images at Westminster College
by Melissa Smolley There are places that invoke a type of deep seeded serenity within us. They aren’t necessarily the most picturesque, or even the most inhabitable, yet something about these places resonates stillness within. Such places invite inquiry and encourage exploration, both intrinsically and externally. When […]
Ernesto Pujol’s Awaiting
Wading in Context A response to Ernesto Pujol’s Awaiting. On Thursday, April 8th, Ernesto Pujol led dozens of participants through a 12-hour, site-specific performance called Awaiting, a project he discussed in the recent edition of 15 Bytes. I suspect the local Mormon audience found resonance in Pujol’s mission […]
Jamie Wyeth
Growing up in Southern California, my summers were spent at the beach, where the menacing call of its flying inhabitants loomed over our play like the marine layer that blocked out the sun. Our trips were split between playing in the sand and deciding which one of us […]
Common to Us All: Why All Art Is In
As Art Access celebrates its twenty-fifth year as a force in Utah’s art community, they could pick no better show than their current one, Outside is In!, to highlight the aim of their exhibition space: as director Ruth Lubbers says, their two galleries are there to “provide a voice to relevant […]
Poets and Painters
Poetry readings are tricky things. At a reading you are a prisoner to the artist in ways you rarely are at exhibitions. A poet’s reading of a poem can give thunder and lightning to the written word (Dylan Thomas reading a credit card contract could make it a […]
Amber Heaton
Friends of Friends, an exhibition of contemporary works that use paper as a medium or surface, opened at the GARFO, on February 26. I spoke with participating artist Amber Heaton in early February as she was designing and constructing a paper sculpture to be installed in the exhibition space. […]
The Closed Circuit
As much as the quality of paint, or the illusion of depth, the relationship between art and viewer is a fundamental element of what we call art. So what happens when an artist denies their viewer this essential relationship, cutting off the dialogue that is the product of […]
In and Out of Context: Jamex and Einar De la Torre at Kimball Art Center
To be effective, satirical artworks must closely resemble the objects of their satire. Doing so successfully is both a weakness and a strength. The same flaws that mar the original and inspire criticism must inevitably appear in the mocking version. But then recognition comes quickly to the audience. […]
de la Torre glass at the Kimball
To enter the main exhibit hall at the Kimball Art Center in Park City this month it is necessary to run the gauntlet between two giant, standing figures that flank the entrance. These are the Sentinels, primarily glass but with mixed media inclusions: an installation by international artists […]
No School, No Problem Utah: Red Rock painters in the early 20th century
Conrad Buff (1886-1975), Canyon Land, L2009.40.1, ca. 1935, oil on masonite, collection of Edenhurst Gallery, Palm Desert, Calif. The Continuing Allure: Painters of Utah’s Red Rock brings to us a unique set of artists who, early in the 20th century, used their skill and visionary perspective to seal the magnificence […]
Sherri Belassen
Pulled by Sherri Belassen, 32 x 78, oil on canvas The exciting thing about art is the opportunity to see and experience the world through the eyes of the artist. Bringing her own unique way of seeing to the Phoenix Gallery in Park City is Sherri Belassen, an Arizona artist whose […]
Displacement
Liu Xiaodong’s “Hotbed,” 2005 The Salt Lake Art Center invites you to sit and contemplate their current exhibition of contemporary Chinese art. In Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art four artists respond to the Three Gorges Dam project, a massive engineering feat that, while harnessing the Yangzi […]
Shared Languages: Daniel Ochoa at Julie Nester Gallery
Self Retrato with Bandana by Daniel Ochoa, oil on panel, 36 x 36 Daniel Ochoa is an Anglo-Spanish artist from the San Francisco Bay Area who lives on the border of two cultures, between which he moves adroitly—if not necessarily comfortably—and who extends this experience in paintings that are […]
Christopher Terry’s Democratic Light
“Space Heater” Utah State University art professor Christopher Terry is exhibiting a new body of work this month at the University’s Studio 102 Gallery. Executed while the artist was on a year-long sabbatical in Essen, Germany, these paintings are filled with Terry’s iconic interior settings — open spaces […]
Nativity Revisited A Contemporary Interpretation at Snow College
Back in March, Snow College Gallery Director Adam Larsen, inspired by Utah painter Brian Kershisnik’s monumentally personal re-conception of the traditional Roman Catholic story of Jesus Christ’s birth, invited more than twenty Utah artists of diverse religious backgrounds to create their own versions of the Nativity. Eventually eighteen […]
Booksellers’ Art: Sam Weller’s Novel Pulp and Ken Sanders’ Greetings from Utah
Most antiquarian bookstores have a spot set aside to display old maps and prints. These might have once been bound into books, but in any case they resonate with the booksellers’ appreciation for fine printing on paper. In Salt Lake, however, two excellent independent bookstores (which are increasingly […]
